a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communication technologies and more particularly to communication technologies for musical tone signals.
b) Description of the Related Art
FIG. 7 shows an example of a network having three nodes ND1 to ND3 connected to each other. One example for digital communications standards and specifications between nodes is IEEE 1394 specifications.
Each of the nodes ND1 to ND3 has a processing unit 51. The node ND3 outputs a signal from an output terminal OUT and the node ND1 receives the signal at an input terminal IN. The node ND2 outputs a signal from an output terminal OUT and the node ND1 receives the signal at another input terminal IN. The node ND1 receives the signals from the two nodes ND2 and ND3 and processes the received signals.
These input terminals IN and output terminals OUT are logical terminals. The input terminal IN and output terminal OUT may use one common physical terminal.
A network is not limited only to the network constituted of three nodes ND1 to ND3, but four or more nodes may constitute a network. In the latter case, the node ND1 is sometimes required to process signals from three or more nodes. If the node ND1 is required to receive signals from a number of nodes, the input terminals IN may comprise as many as the number of nodes are required. If the number of nodes becomes too large, the node 1 cannot process the signals supplied from the nodes.